


Mimesis

by thisprettywren



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Community: thegameison_sh, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-02
Updated: 2011-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-15 07:43:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisprettywren/pseuds/thisprettywren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Challenge 1 at thegameison_sh. The prompt was "new."</p>
    </blockquote>





	Mimesis

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Challenge 1 at thegameison_sh. The prompt was "new."

_We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes_ , John Watson recites as he regards himself in the mirror. Between the uniform and the haircut, he doesn’t recognise himself. _T_ _hat’s not quite true, is it?_ It isn’t that he doesn’t recognise himself, it’s that he _does_. Which, all told, is worse.

He’s always considered Thoreau a sentimental fool.

  


* * *

John wonders if he’ll ever become accustomed to nighttime in Afghanistan. It’s quiet often enough, but occasionally it’s rather spectacularly _not_. Each time he starts from sleep he has a moment of disorientation, expecting to look outside and see the familiar lights of London traffic. Each time understanding filters through his brain it feels unwelcome, like an intrusion.

He doesn’t acclimatize, exactly—not enough to feel comfortable—but he learns to pretend that he has, for the sake of getting on with things. If he’s been awakened it’s likely that his services are required, so he provides them. He serves a function, and it distracts him enough that he doesn’t need to analyze his motivations in doing so. The pretense gradually becomes habitual.

He tries to convince himself that habitual pretense is the same as comfort.

It almost works.

  


* * *

John is reaching down to help a man to his feet when the the bullet enters his shoulder. The first sensation isn’t tearing muscle and connective tissue, though that does happen. It’s a slamming _thud_ , like a rugby tackle. It feels familiar.

  


* * *

John remembers hearing, somewhere, that an optimist looks at a wound and sees a scar, while a pessimist looks at a scar and sees a wound. John considers himself a realist, so he does his best not to see either.

The whole thing is a bit of an paradox. John doesn’t have time for paradoxes. Or, rather, he _does_. He has nothing but time, nothing to do except lie in this hospital cot and wait. Which, all told, is worse.

Paradoxes require manipulation, need to be rolled over and over in the mind, constantly reexamined and kept open. He could keep at it endlessly, if he allowed himself, keep the insight fresh and raw and gaping until it poisoned him from the inside out.

Best to avoid it altogether, then.

How does one set about growing scar tissue?

Slowly.

He waits.

He’s a doctor, after all. He knows that if he can just let it be, doesn’t pick at it, it will heal clean.

* * *

John wonders if he will ever become accustomed to nighttime in London. Each time he dreams the desert it feels fresh and untried, like he’s just stepped back from inventing an entire landscape of chaos. Each time he starts from sleep he has a moment of disorientation, expecting to look outside and see an echo of the scene that just played out behind his eyes. The London outside his window inexplicably makes his hand shake, intensifies the ache in his shoulder. Lying in the dark he can feel the knotted tissue there, pulsing with the heat and pain of his disquiet.

He convinces himself that he’s grateful to be home. He learns to pretend it’s true. But when he shudders himself out of a nightmare there is no one requiring his services, nothing to be getting on with, and it leaves room for doubt. He remains unconvinced of his own pretense.

He develops a limp and buys a cane. He holds it in the hand he doesn’t use to aim his pistol.

* * *

Wounds fail to become scars under two circumstances. First, if the wound is fatal (John knew that one already). Second, if the wound is constantly kept raw and never given a chance to heal.

 _It’s remarkably like having one’s skull peeled open,_ he thinks, regarding his new flatmate across the taxi’s wide seat. The pale gaze is sharp and piercing, intrusive in the way being shot ought to have been.

It’s bright and fresh and surgical, already clean, and it doesn’t turn away.


End file.
